63: John Walda on the changing role of leadership in Higher Education — Part 1

John Walda, President & CEO of NACUBO

NACUBO President John Walda joins the roundtable this week to share reflections on the NACUBO Annual Meeting 2014 in Seattle and the role of the conference in defining and supporting business officers in their work. In part one of our conversation, we discuss the impact of higher education on the country as reflected by speaker Bill Gates, and the role of the business officer as it continues to expand in institutions in our country. NACUBO continues to move the conversation around strategic communication forward and John and Howard both reflect on the necessity of clear and strategic communication to both internal and external audiences in maximizing the value in higher education programs.

About John Walda

John D. Walda is the President and CEO of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) in Washington, D.C., where he has served since 2006. He served as president of the Indiana University Board of Trustees, as chair of the Indiana Lottery Commission, as a director and chair of the Association of Governing Boards, and as chair of the Board of Clarian Health Partners (now Indiana University Health). He is a member and past-chair of the Steering Committee for the Washington Higher Education Secretariat, a past Director for the American Council on Education, a director of the Indiana University Foundation and a trustee for Carroll College. Before coming to NACUBO, Walda was a partner in the law firm Bose McKinney & Evans in Indianapolis and was Senior Vice President - Federal Relations for Bose Treacy Associates LLC. Walda has been a member of the American, Montana and Indiana State Bar Associations; American Inns of Court (Master of the Bench); American College of Trial Lawyers (Fellow); NCAA Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics; AAU Council on Federal Relations; and NASULGC Council on Government Relations. He is on the Board of Directors for the Yellowstone Park Foundation. Walda received both his BA (1972) and JD (1975) from Indiana University. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in May 2011. 

62: Cultivating Organizational Excellence with UW's Ruth Johnston

Ruth Johnston, Ph.D — Associate Vice Provost, Organizational Excellence, University of Washington

University of Washington has become a beacon for organizational effectiveness in higher education. The work of building strength through communication and collaboration across the institution has helped to drive capacity for new projects and greater effectiveness in existing operations. 

This week on the show, UW’s Ruth Johnston joins us to share insights on developing a best-in-class program around organizational excellence. Her team is behind the upcoming workshop, Effective Group Decision-Making & Communicating Strategically. Led by our own Howard Teibel, this workshop is designed for UW deans, senior administrators, and staff involved in organizational change. 

Listen in for a unique perspective on driving change in higher education from a recognized leader the field. 

• Workshop Details: Effective Group Decision-Making & Communicating Strategically

• University of Washington Organizational Excellence Program

Ruth Johnston, Ph.D

Ruth Johnston has spent her career studying organizational development and higher education. As Associate Vice Provost, Organizational Excellence at University of Washington, she works across the university leading and facilitating strategic planning, process improvements (using Lean and other technologies), developing leaders and staff, creating metrics and measuring performance, and helping to manage change. 

61: How to get the most out of the NACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting

We’re gearing up for the NACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting in Seattle coming July 19-22. As usual, the NACUBO team has built an incredible catalog of events and learning opportunities and we’re trilled to be a presenting part of it. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright walk through the key strengths of the event, from developing new business officers and helping to cultivate a culture of collaboration across campuses, to their leading voice in public policy around higher eduction. 

This year, Howard will be co-facilitating a presentation on strategic communication with past Navigating Change guests Kelly Fox and Greg Lovins. Together, they’ll lead a discussion on the power of not only sharing a deep understanding of complex financial information, but sharing that information with campus stakeholders in a way that drives strategy across the institution.  

60: Conflict and Collaboration

Howard Teibel
President
Teibel Education Consulting

The road to collaboration is paved with complexity. We forget that sitting on teams, driving toward improved processes and structures, fantastic new programs and initiatives, are real people with real emotional ties to the work being done. This can lead to unconscious conflict that impedes growth and progress. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the opportunities and pitfalls inherent in building strong teams and offer suggestions for cultivating a progressive and productive team environment.

59: NACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting — Preparing for the New Business Officer Program!

Howard Teibel
President
Teibel Education Consulting

Howard Teibel has joined the speaker line-up of this year’s NACUBO New Business Officers Program with his presentation, “Leading, Managing, and Surviving Change.” In this week’s episode of Navigating Change, Howard and Pete Wright explore the program and NACUBO’s aim to help those new to the CBO role develop skills they’ll need to lead in today’s institution.

The role of the chief business officer is evolving. New demands for the CBO call for involvement across the institution to influence and drive change, and these demands call for new skills in leadership, communication, and strategy. Now that exemplary understanding of the complexities of finance is a foregone conclusion, how can those new to this role develop skills for which they may have been heretofore untried? NACUBO has built a rich schedule of speakers and experts to help those new to the CBO role get acquainted to the new demands of finance leadership. 

The New Business Officers Program will be held July 18-19 in the Metropolitan Ballroom of the Sheraton Seattle Hotel. The program is limited to chief business officers and financial officers who report directly to the president and who have been in their current positions for less than three years. For information on the program, please visit NACUBO. 

58: Balancing Culture and Innovation Part 2

Following up on our conversation with Deborah Sunya Moore from The Chautauqua Institution last week, we’re picking up this conversation around the constant balancing act between building and celebrating a strong culture, and innovating in new areas and directions. The big question: no matter how much we personally celebrate the importance of change, how do you cultivate a culture of change when members of your community do not share your beliefs? This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright share insights around building a culture that anticipates and celebrates change and innovation while embracing the legacy of their institutions.

57: Balancing Culture and Innovation at Chautauqua with Deborah Sunya Moore

Taking on new challenges forces us to re-evaluate existing processes in new ways. This shake-up can introduce discomfort and confusion, par for the course in a change initiative, ultimately all for the reward of greater efficiency, productivity, and affinity. These challenges are magnified when your institution boasts a legacy over 100 years strong. Our guest, Deborah Sunya Moore, serves as associate director of programming with The Chautauqua Institution, an arts and education community in New York on a consistent march to balance innovation and change with the expectations of guests who have been attending Chautauqua for generations. This week on the show, Deborah Sunya Moore joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright to share how the Chautauqua Institution balances change with culture year after year. 

56: Financial Leadership in the Business Unit with Administrative Management Institute director Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers, Vice President and Treasurer — Carleton College; Director, Administrative Management Institute

We’ve devoted many hours of this show to the role of the business officer of the institution. But today’s guest reminds us that there is great opportunity to guide and support the institution from the individual academic or departmental units. Administrative Management Institute director Fred Rogers has spent the last 21 years working with this body of finance experts in association with EACUBO and Cornell University, building professional development programs that celebrate the great potential of unit level business officers to the institution. Howard Teibel will be presenting on Leadership and Decision-Making at the AMI conference, July 28-August 1 at Cornell University in Ithaca. This week on the show, Fred joins Howard and Pete Wright to share his perspective on AMI, and discuss the critical importance of strategic alignment across the institution. 

55: Reflections on NAEP — Leadership Lessons from Procurement Pros

Fresh from his time with the National Association for Education Procurement, Howard Teibel returns to share his impressions of the 2014 annual meeting. Procurement professionals are in a unique position, with the opportunity to move from the legacy transactional function to being seen as a key strategic partner in administration. But strategy is a new discipline. This week on the show, Howard Teibel joins Pete Wright to share his insights from NAEP, and shares his thoughts for procurement professionals looking to improve their decision making prowess and strategic position in the institution.

54: Organizational Goal-Setting

In episode 52, we discussed the role of a clear mission and vision to the strategic planning process. But we left that conversation feeling unresolved — how do you take your mission and vision and translate it into goals and objectives that move the institution forward each day? This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the nature of organizational goal-setting, and how to engage the institution in a process to translate the mission into daily activities that encourage growth and innovation.

53: Great disruptors — Reflections on WACUBO 2014

The WACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting has just wrapped in Las Vegas, and Howard returns with his thoughts, reflections, and connections. Encounters with Sal Khan of The Khan Academy and Professor Robert Zemsky of University of Pennsylvania highlight the trip, with a discussion of shifting models of core delivery that challenge higher education administrators and faculty alike. The bottom line: administrators are increasingly charged to both lead and support faculty with a push into a new era of service delivery. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright dig into this charge and share insights from a fantastic journey to Las Vegas!

52: Mission, Vision, and the Strategic Planning Process

Done right, and your mission, vision, and values statements can become beacons in your institution’s drive toward a powerful strategic plan. Done wrong, it ends up a in a dusty binder buried deep in a drawer. This week on Navigating Change, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discussion the nature and importance of your mission and vision statements to the strategic plan, and offer insights for development and structure that will help your teams understand and rally behind your direction. 

51: Communicating for Action with Kelly Fox — WACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting

Kelly Fox, Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO, University of Colorado at Boulder

According to our guest Kelly Fox, Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO from University of Colorado at Boulder, communicating effectively is not just about making sure the leadership team is up to speed. It’s about positioning the most important messages of the institution in the most compelling light for every constituent audience, internal and external. This week on the show, Kelly joins Howard Teibel and Pete Wright to share her insights in effective communication, as Howard and Kelly prepare for their upcoming talk on the subject at the WACUBO 2014 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. 

50: Lifelong Learning — Insurgents in Traditional Ed?

In a recent editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, Jeff Selingo offers his perspective on the gap between traditional education and new models of learning cropping up across the field. According to Selingo, "Traditional higher education tends to dismiss new entrants to the field in the belief that a college’s brand name resonates with consumers. In an age of democratized education, when learning happens everywhere, any day, throughout a person’s life, having a good brand name is no longer good enough.” This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the massive shift occurring in traditional education and share insights on the characteristics of schools that are making this transition proactively. 

49: Trust, Change, and Transitioning to Shared Services

A recent news item cropped up in the Chronicle pointing to a brewing rift between administrators and faculty over a transition to a shared services model. We’ve discussed shared services often on this show, both as a challenge for change agents and an accommodation toward financial sustainability. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright discuss the issues surrounding shared service model specifically, and offer insights for making the transition in a way that helps all constitutes move through the change process smoothly. 

48: Strategic Communication at SACUBO Annual Meeting with Guest Greg Lovins

Greg Lovins, Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs, Appalachian State University

According to our special guest Greg Lovins, communication is not always easy for business officers to do. As vice chancellor for business affairs at Appalachian State University, Greg and his team are responsible to ensure the institution is equipped with the information they need to collectively make smart decisions and keen investments. Ensuring buy-in and collaboration among key constituencies is a challenge for the very best communicators, but when the message is loaded with complexity and offers a high opportunity for jargon, clear communication becomes much more difficult. 

Greg will be joining Howard Teibel at the SACUBO Annual Meeting on April 13 in San Antonio, Texas for “Communicating Financial Information Effectively,” a pre-conference session from 12:30 to 1:20 on Sunday, April 13. This week on the show, Greg joins Howard and Pete Wright for an introduction to the interactive discussion they’ll be facilitating next week.  

47: "With Clarity for All" — Strategic Collaboration in the Institution

In “With Clarity for All,” Gail Gregory and Howard Teibel share the results of their work with leaders from Emory University, Caldwell College, and Carnegie Mellon University as they work to bridge three key leadership groups: faculty, administration, and the board. The solutions they uncovers illustrate that today’s successful CBOs are finding the common themes of mutual respect, common language, and collaboration to be key in meeting those challenges head on. This week on the show, Howard and Gail join Pete Wright to share their perspective on writing the feature for NACUBO’s Business Officer Magazine, and the critical importance of developing a culture of strategic collaboration across the institution.

46: Economy, Strategy, and the People Factor

In his article, “Financially Strapped Colleges Grow More Vulnerable as Economic Recovery Lags,” Mark Keierleber documents the changing tide of financial resolutions that some institutions are leveraging to stem losses. In it, we see institutions resorting to staff and faculty layoffs — a relatively recent occurrence that impacts not just the short-term financial sustainability of the institution, but the culture as well. This week on the show, Howard Teibel and Pete Wright talk about this trend as part of a package of adjustments the modern institution is turning toward for support as many struggle to adapt to new economic and educational realities. 

44: Better decision-making at the heart of organizational effectiveness

EACUBO 2014 NY Area Programming Committee Spring Program Preview

If we're going to take on new challenges across our institutions, we have to get better at making decisions as a team. In our experience, making decisions that leverage shared experience and creativity, while not getting mired in process and politics, is one of the key best practice differentiators of highly effective organizations. Howard Teibel will be joining the EACUBO New York Area Programming Committee for their Spring Program on May 28. This week on the show, Howard and Pete Wright share a preview of the presentation and provide a framework for developing organizational effectiveness through better decisions.